"Unsafe surfing" leads to 70 spam emails a day. After just a month

Share

Security firm McAfee, which has a vested interest in spreading panic and fear among internet users but we’ll pretend not to notice, has been experimenting with internet spam.

McAfee sent 50 people from across the world out on the internet while “unprotected” and found they were soon spammed to death within a month. The terms of the experiment were not revealed, so we’re unsure if the users were being careful – ie, using Hotmail accounts and non-existent addresses when signing up for stuff and not clicking on links to get lottery millions wired over from Nigeria – or not.

But still. The most popular spam messages were ones offering financial services (ie, send us some of your money) followed by ads for herbal Viagra and other “meds.” Pornography has sadly declined to a distant fourth place in the spam league. We must be getting bored of it.

The testers also noticed their PCs slowing down, due to infestation by non-specific “malware.” I’m certainly panicked by the findings. I’d better all sign up with McAfee right away.